WEEKEND GETAWAY

I’ve never paddled a bayou river in the Deep South, but I had the feeling I was on one during a recent 10-mile kayak trip down the Baraboo River from North Freedom to Haskins Park in Baraboo.

The day was warm and muggy and the slow-moving stream was deeply shaded in parts by overhanging trees, some of them willows. There were also numerous vines and limbs that almost reached the brown waters of the Boo, as locals call this river, which flows nearly 120 miles from its headwaters near Hillsboro to the Wisconsin River south of Portage.

Photographer Callie Godiska and I rented a pair of sit-on-top Old Town plastic kayaks for our four-hour trip from Al Doering’s Baraboo River Canoe and Kayak Rentals in North Freedom. Al’s grandson, Jacob Doering, shuttled us to the Village Park where we slipped into the river via a new handicapped-accessible dock, which made entering the stream a breeze.

Wisconsin is squeaky cheese curds, fishing spots, Packers fans and time spent by the lake. It’s also the Milwaukee entrepreneur, the Hmong artisan and the dairy farmer. Stories in our Be Wisconsin series look at deeply rooted tradition and at the surprising ways the state culture is changing.

Wisconsin is squeaky cheese curds, fishing spots, Packers fans and time spent by the lake. It’s also the Milwaukee entrepreneur, the Hmong artisan and the dairy farmer. Stories in our Be Wisconsin series look at deeply rooted tradition and at the surprising ways the state culture is changing.

The lanky grad student, on summer break from a university in Texas, briefed us on how to navigate log jams. Jacob, his grandfather and other crew members have spent nearly 100 hours this year cutting passages to make the stream navigable so paddlers don’t have to portage up and down the river’s muddy banks.

“We’re out there every week to make the river safe because you never know when a tree is going to fall in and block the stream,” he said.

Once on the Boo, we were quickly off into something of an almost primordial aquatic wilderness. The shriek of a disembodied crane echoed over the river as we paddled downstream and an immature bald eagle flew off to the east in a scene that could have been hundreds, if not thousands of years old. In fact, if a pterodactyl had flown over us, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

It was a weekday, so we pretty much had the river to ourselves for the first half-dozen miles, other than some ducks, geese, herons and the occasional turtle sunning itself on a rock or log. The highlight of our paddle was a limestone wall on the shaded, right side of the river that was covered with nearly iridescent moss and ferns.

Farther downstream, we encountered a group of women floating the river in large tubes. And near the take-out at Haskins Park, several other kayakers passed us. We’d encountered only one section of riffles, beneath the giant Highway 12 bridge. But below Haskins, the river has a dozen more small, Class 1 rapids as it flows through Baraboo, past Circus World buildings on both sides of the stream and then out into farmland on the east side of town. It is paralleled by a river walk for much of its course through Baraboo, which has a population of around 12,000.

Al Doering, a La Valle native and longtime river user who runs an auto and truck repair shop in North Freedom, said he was recruited by community leaders in Baraboo and North Freedom to open his 54-boat livery to get more people on the river, which he calls one of “least-appreciated recreation resources in the region.

“It’s is one of the best fishing streams around here. You never know what you are going to get on the end of your line. Everyone should cast a line in there if they can. I’ve caught musky, northern pike, walleye, crappie, bluegills, carp, catfish and even sturgeon, which you have to release.”

Supported by grants, North Freedom spent around $350,000 to improve the park and install the dock where we launched our boats. There was also a handicapped-accessible dock at Haskins, but it was on the grass of the park because it had been ripped loose from its moorings by high water this spring.

Dave Murphy, president of Friends of the Baraboo River, said settlers built eight dams on the river in the 1880s, starting in Elroy and including four in Baraboo to power feed mills and industries. The last one, the Linen Mill Dam, was removed in 2001. The Baraboo newspaper celebrated the event with a large headline that blared “It’s open! Officials celebrate free-flowing river.”

Though Doering’s livery operates only from North Freedom to the Glenville take-out east of Baraboo, Murphy said parts of the upper Baraboo are open around Wonewoc, where passages through log jams have been cut. The outfitter Beyond Boundaries operates out of an old feed mill in Wonewoc and rents canoes and kayaks for trips of up to 13 miles down to La Valle. The river has a different character upstream from North Freedom, Murphy said, and flows under 200-foot high limestone bluffs.

Murphy, a former whitewater kayaker who's paddled the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, said the ultimate goal of the Friends group and other organizations is to make more of the river safe to paddle, and put in additional handicapped-accessible boat launches. He hopes that can be accomplished by 2025.

If successful, the effort would earn the river National Water Trail status from the National Park System and make the Boo the longest restored, free-flowing river in the country that is ADA-accessible, he said.